room preparatory for the other decorations, and the visitor, after
looking at the Galatea for a while, mounted the ladder, and with a
fragment of charcoal drew a colossal head on the wall beneath the
cornice. Raphael did not return, however, and after waiting for some
time the visitor departed, refusing to give his name to the servant, but
saying, "Show your master that, and he will know who I am." Some time
after, Raphael came in, and on inquiring if any one had been there, his
servant told him a small black-bearded man had been there and drawn a
head on the wall by which he said he would recognize him. Raphael looked
up, saw the head, and exclaimed, "Michel Angelo!" A similar story is
told of Apelles and Protogenes. It is told by Pliny, and the point of it
is, that Apelles, on arriving at Rhodes, immediately went to call upon
Protogenes, who was then living here. Protogenes, however, was absent,
and the studio was in charge of an old woman, who, after Apelles had
looked at the pictures, asked the name of the visitor to give to her
master on his return. Apelles did not answer at first, but observing a
large black panel prepared for painting on an easel, he took up a pencil
and drew an extremely delicate outline on it, saying, "He will recognize
me by this," and departed. On the return of Protogenes, being informed
of what had happened, he looked at the outline, and, struck by its
extreme delicacy, exclaimed, "That is Apelles--no one else could have
executed so perfect a work." An anecdote is told of Sir George Beaumont
going in a coach to a tavern with a party of gay young men. The waiter
came to the coach door with a light, and as he was holding this up to
the others, those who had already got out went round, and getting in at
the opposite coach-door came out again, so that there seemed to be no
end to the procession, and the waiter ran into the house, frightened out
of his wits. The same story is told of Swift and four clergymen dressed
in canonicals. "Men of the world," says Goldsmith, in one of the papers
of the Bee, "maintain that the true end of speech is not so much to
express our wants as to conceal them." How often, said Irving, is this
quoted as one of the subtle remarks of the fine-witted Talleyrand! Every
one remembers another familiar witty repartee attributed to the latter.
When seated between Madame de Stael and Madame Recamier, and pouring
forth gallantry, first at the feet of one, then of the other, Madame de
Stael suddenly asked him if she and Madame Recamier fell into the river,
which of the two he would save first? "Madame," replied Talleyrand, "you
could swim!" This pretty reply has been matched by Mrs. Jameson with one
far prettier, and founded on it. Prince S. was one day loitering on the
banks of the Isar, in the English garden at Munich, by the side of the
beautiful Madame de V., then the object of his devoted admiration. For
a while he had been speaking to her of his mother, for whom he had ever
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